Guide to Hogwarts
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Experimental piece - extracts from "Aquinas' Guide to Hogwarts". Supporting material for 'Saint Potter' universe.
1. The Founding

Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is by way of an experimental attempt to nail down some details of geography and history of Hogwarts for the 'Saint Potter' alternate universe. See author notes for more on this, but some details will almost certainly differ from canon.

Further Note: The piece is an account dictated in the late twentieth century by an 'in universe' character, who has their own views and agenda, and may be biased, guessing, or otherwise misleading on some points.

Revision (18th April, 2014): 'facing towards the forest' expanded to 'facing towards the heart of the forest'.

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_Extract From 'Aquinas' Guide to Hogwarts'_

Quite what possessed the four 'founders' – Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin – to establish a base of operations which was subsequently to become a school of magic in a remote Scottish glen is, due to the lack of credible historic sources on the matter, a topic for endless debate. The man that most sources tell us was the leader in this enterprise, Godric, was a west-country man from England, and so the decision to go quite so far from the lands in which he was commonly travelled – and had known from birth – at face value seems to make little sense. Although England was occasionally riven by struggles between the Anglo-Saxons and the Norsemen at the time, Scotland was itself hardly free from incidents – though given the way that muggles of the time generally avoided areas such as what has since become known as 'The Forbidden Forest' (itself considerably more extensive in that era), it is possible that the positioning of Hogwarts in what at the time was the midst of the forest may have offered a shield against most muggle intrusions. Another possibility is that the founders deliberately sought out the location with a view to trading with the centaurs in said forest for rare animal parts and plants that the centaurs had ready access to in the forest, and perhaps also with the merfolk of the lake. And then there are wilder theories, such as that Hogwarts was built close to or on the site of Rowena's home, and that she, being an enchantress of great wiles and subtle magic, _beguiled_ Godric into abandoning the lands that he knew to travel so far north to settle, for her own convenience. In the opinion of this author, such latter stories are sufficiently insulting to Godric's abilities as a wizard – and as a man who knew his own mind – as to be worth mentioning only to display their obvious ridiculousness. And then there are the crazy theories that the land which was in later centuries to come to be occupied by Hogsmeade was the site of a meteorite strike, and that the founders travelled all the way to Scotland to establish a fortress nearby for convenience of study of it (or due to more superstitious reasons pertaining to its presence)…

At any rate, whatever their reasons for choosing the site, the four founders travelled to Scotland and in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, on a narrow neck of land betwixt mountains and lake, raised their fortress.

And Hogwarts, at founding, _was_ a fortress. The keep, facing towards the heart of the forest, and the great hall 'sheltered' to the southwest in its 'lee', built with the aid of giants (either conscripted or in alliance with Godric, depending on which accounts you believe), was unquestionably first and foremost the seat of a warlord. It may have been that Godric meant merely to deter giving an impression of weakness to his new neighbours, which might lead to trouble, but the shifting staircases, capricious doors, hidden chambers, and shifting 'dead ends' of the original buildings are all features of a residence constructed for the purpose of giving the occupiers as much advantage as humanly possible over any invader, should battle ever arise. Indeed, during the first winter of construction at the site, an unsuccessful attack on the construction work was made by a militant faction of the centaurs of the forest and a number of creatures which they had either pressed into service or temporary allied with. This treacherous attack, made during the day of the Yule feast, when the centaurs hoped to catch the witches and wizards off their guard and making merry, was beaten off at bloody and terrible cost to the forces of the forest, whose plan was not, due to the superbness of Godric's spymaster, the surprise that they had hoped it to be. It was not to be the last attack upon Hogwarts by enemies, least of all from those living normally within the surrounding forest, but as it subsequently turned out it was sufficient to guarantee peaceful co-existence for the rest of the duration of the original four founders' occupation of the site. (Perhaps Godric's hurried expansion of his planned works to include an additional tower abutting the northwest side of the keep, to serve as a barracks block for muggle mercenaries may have contributed too…)

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Author Notes:

As of April 2014, I have been unable to find definitive information on several points of the history, geography, or location of canon Hogwarts - so have taken to reinventing canon or finding my own answers altogether, for the purposes of background of the 'Saint Potter' alternate universe.

In the 'Saint Potter' universe, Hogwarts is positioned close to the northeast 'toe' of Beinn Bheòil, and Loch Ericht is assumed to be much smaller and to constitute 'The Black Lake'. (Land which in the real world is otherwise occupied by Loch Ericht is assumed in the 'Saint Potter' universe to be for the greater part occupied by 'The Forbidden Forest', which also extends over most of the real world 'catchment' area of Loch Ericht, and also over the upper reaches of the nearby River Pattack.

By 1991, in the Saint Potter universe, Godric's original 'keep' has become for the most part staff & guest accommodation, and the 'barracks' ended up becoming Ravenclaw Tower. Other parts were added to the school and/or adapted over the centuries.

Update: (24th April, 2014)

In the next instalment I take a line that the initial buildings were known as 'Godric's Keep'; the 'Hogwarts' name came later, after it had become a school.


	2. The Early Years

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: This piece is by way of an experimental attempt to nail down some details of geography and history of Hogwarts for the 'Saint Potter' alternate universe. Some details will almost certainly differ from canon.

Further Note: The piece is an account dictated in the late twentieth century by an 'in universe' character, who has their own views and agenda, and may be biased, guessing, or otherwise misleading on some points. (Helga Hufflepuff comes in for the odd jab in this instalment, as the 'in universe' writer has some 'issues' regarding her...)

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_Extracts from 'Aquinas' Guide to Hogwarts'_

Much of the early thinking going on around Godric's Keep, as the castle was initially known, appears to have in fact been shaped by the agenda of Helga Hufflepuff. She was a widely travelled witch for her era, having gone as far afield as Constantinople in the years before the founding, in which latter place she spent several years soaking up the atmosphere of one of the great cultural centres of the day. A thousand years on, there are still legends in circulation in that region about a 'madwoman from abroad' (whose description is often suspiciously similar to that of Helga) who on a semi-regular basis drank members of the Varangian guard under the table in their earliest days in that city. When not carousing, Helga was busy frequenting Constantinople's libraries, having many manuscripts copied to take back to Britain for her dear friend Rowena. And of course, she was always enquiring about and taking notes of other aspects of the city's life. The truly fanciful might even imagine that the system of houses of Hogwarts – to only one of which a pupil might belong – in some way mirrored or was inspired by the Byzantine capital's system of guilds, extant during Helga's stay there, and it is certain that seeing quite so many peoples in quite so many countries must have impacted her thinking and perhaps led to her (at times naïve) willingness to engage with almost anyone.

Yet the houses of Hogwarts and other consequences of some of Helga's ways of thinking were as yet a way off in the future; the most significant effect Helga was to have upon the early years around 'Godric's Keep' (besides her very many contributions to Rowena's book and scroll collections) was in the very nature of the castle being a _stone_ fortress. Wood and earth were materials much easier and faster (especially for a witch or wizard) to work with and raise structures from. Indeed, across Britain, with the exception of the odd religious edifice, raised to serve muggle religious purposes, very few noteworthy stone edifices had been erected since Roman times; but Helga had been to The Orient, and seen Constantinople with its myriad of buildings and great walls. Only stone (or brick, in a pinch) would be good enough for her.

In this, at least, later centuries were to prove Helga wise. It meant extra headaches for Godric and Salazar, though, actually overseeing the task of construction, since for various reasons the immediately available local stone was deemed 'inferior quality' and in the end granite had to be sourced from a quarry some miles remote out on the edge of the Moor of Rannoch. Shipping the granite required the cutting of a track too, through the intervening stretch of forest, which no doubt contributed to the ill will of the forest's dwellers which was to culminate in and express itself in the attack of that first winter of construction.

(As an aside, it should be noted that once Helga had made it clear that only stone would do, both Godric and Salazar scoffed at the notion of _transfiguring_ stone to use in the works. Transfigured stone could be easily restored to its original shape and form or changed into another altogether by any moderately competent witch or wizard, and if there was going to be a _stone_ castle, then Godric and Salazar were going to 'do it properly' and use something naturally resistant to attempts to turn it into a pile of, say, slush. And whilst it is unclear if they understood the reasons that make granite so difficult to magically alter (its tightly interlocking structure of multiple crystals of different sizes, shapes, and types) they must surely have known from practical experimentation just how difficult granite is for a witch or wizard to reshape by any means other than that of sheer brute force.)

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A good deal of the handiwork of Godric, Salazar, and their giant building crew is of course still available to view in Hogwarts today, to the visitor able to gain access to the castle, or at least to its grounds. It has withstood the storms of time and battle (and of occasional siege warfare). Here and there the odd statue may have lost a face, or a crenellation been replaced, and various buildings may have been added on by later builders (some more successfully than others) but the core of the castle is essentially still the same, give or take the odd internal refurbishment or repurposing.

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With the keep, hall, and barracks tower completed, and with Godric's giants dismissed (for now), to return to their homes, the founders lived in peace for a number of years, alongside their (occasionally rowdy) bodyguards (Helga, perhaps harking back to her days in Constantinople, had rounded up some Norse mercenaries to serve in that capacity), before the first sign of trouble was to rear its head. The fame of two witches and two wizards who had built themselves a fortress in Northern Britain (and who moreover had a sizeable and diverse collection of written materials, likely greater than anything seen in the country since the days of Merlin) had naturally spread, as had word of their great learning.

And so, inevitably, the first wizard, desiring to prostrate himself to learn at the feet of four such great sages showed up. The age of the school was about to begin.

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Author Notes:

If this instalment jumps around a bit between some sections, my excuse for that is that in the 'Guide' from which these are putative extracts, there would be long sections of material drawing the reader's attention to the particular pattern of the vaulting of the ceiling of the hall, and the possible astronomical connections and magical significance of particular measurements of lengths of the ribs and the degrees of curvature... Things which a guidebook would naturally mention for the sightseer, but which I have no intention to write. (That's my excuse, anyway, for not having one continuous smooth flow of narrative.)

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Some mentions here, regarding information I've extracted from Wikipedia:

1) As far as I can determine from Wikipedia, although Varangians arrived in Constantinople in 980 AD, the actual guard was not formed until 988 AD.

2) Constantinople had a well-established system of guilds by the tenth century. Membership of one guild was prohibitive of membership of any others.

3) With the exception of churches, Anglo-Saxon buildings tended to be built from timber, with stone only ever used for foundations.

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On to other stuff. There is no indication in canon, as of April 2014, of Helga Hufflepuff having ever travelled, least of all to Constantinople. It seemed to me that at least _one_ of the founders must have travelled abroad however (otherwise where did the idea of a stone castle come from when everything else, bar the odd muggle religious building, going up in Britain for centuries has been timber?) and I went with Helga. Initially, it was in the interests of putting a character in the spotlight who gets little attention in canon (as of April 2014, she has the shortest Harry Potter wiki entry), but it later occurred to me that her 'open mindedness' might actually fit with a person who _had_ travelled a bit in her time. And during the tenth century, Constantinople was one of *the* major centres of European learning and culture.

The comments regarding granite are as far as I know non-canonical. For the Saint Potter universe, I'm going to be operating on the basis that some transfigurations are more complicated than others, depending on the target material's 'natural' state, and that lots and lots of different types of crystals packed very tightly together are a major headache for even a master or mistress of the art.

As an aside, the notion of Godric and Salazar as building site foremen, with their crew of giants, being bossed around by Helga Hufflepuff entertained me...


	3. The First Apprentice

Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: This piece is by way of an experimental attempt to nail down some details of geography and history of Hogwarts for the 'Saint Potter' alternate universe. Some details will almost certainly differ from canon.

Further Note: The piece is an account dictated in the late twentieth century by an 'in universe' character, who has their own views and agenda, and may be biased, guessing, or otherwise misleading on some points. (The 'in universe' writer has some 'issues' regarding Helga Hufflepuff, for example...)

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_Extract from 'Aquinas' Guide to Hogwarts'_

History _does_ record the name of the first wizard to successfully present himself before Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Helga Hufflepuff: it was 'Adam of York' (or 'of Jórvík', as York was known then). It does not indicate the date or time that the meeting took place (the closest source to the time of the founders detailing the event that the writer has ever personally traced was a tapestry depicting it dating back to the late fourteenth century, which hung in the Hufflepuff common room when the writer was at school, and which strongly suggested Adam turned up during breakfast one spring morning). There are no accounts of how many witches or wizards may have (unsuccessfully) presented themselves in the hopes of gaining an apprenticeship or some other arrangement, _before_ Adam of York arrived, nor whether the founders were united in decision regarding Adam. The tapestry in the Hufflepuff common room shows the would-be pupil prostrating himself specifically before Helga, whilst the other founders look on with a variety of expressions on their faces, and with a pile of cloth and silver coins spread at Helga's feet. Whether the tapestry's creator was romanticising the subject matter or accurately drawing upon oral traditions or written accounts of the event, since lost to the centuries, is itself a matter of speculation for modern historians. However, it seems credible to the writer of this guide that of the four founders Helga would be the easiest to sway. She had been to Constantinople, and acquired all sorts of ideas there. Whilst almost certainly she can have been no fool, with the ideas and fashions that she no doubt picked up during her travels, she might well have been the most susceptible of the founders to shameless flattery and fine gifts. Certainly there was no _need_ for the founders to take on any kind of apprentices or students – by this point they had been established in the area for some years, and they had their studies to occupy them (and indeed in several cases, by now, families). There were _children_ of their own to whom the founders could some day hand on any traditions or projects.

Nevertheless, irrespective of which or how many of the founders decided to take him on, 'Adam of York' was successful in his petition to become an apprentice and study under Godric, Salazar, Rowena, and Helga. He became part of the castle furniture, slightly less useful, no doubt, than the Norse mercenaries in many things (who Godric was by now taking a particular interest in, even going so far as to adopt as his own, the son of a warrior killed during some sort of brawl with a troll – this boy was the 'Aelfric' who was to be such a source of trouble in later years).

And where one had succeeded, it became inevitable, as word got about, that yet more would follow…

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Author Notes: (subject to update)

As will be apparent by now, with this account of the history of the Hogwarts of the Saint Potter universe, I'm taking a line that the founders didn't originally _intend_ (excepting maybe Helga) to open a school. It was something that they almost stumbled into. For the record I envision 'Adam of York' as being seventeen or eighteen when he arrived at what was still (at that point) known as 'Godric's Keep'; he knew maybe the very basics of magic but wanted to learn from people with reputations for being powerful and very learned in the arts. The gradual slide into the school started with the arrival of young adults - children attending for tuition came later.

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As of May, 2014, the Wikipedia articles on 'York' and 'Scandinavian York' inform me that 'Jórvík' was name of the capital (and also of the actual realm) of a Norse kingdom in England that lasted from 866 AD to 954 AD. The name 'Jórvík' stuck to the city for some time after that though, gradually changing in the years after the Norman conquest (1066 AD) to the current name, 'York'.

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As of May, 2014, I have no information on who the 'first student' at canon Hogwarts may have been, and Adam of York is a figure who I have (to the best of my knowledge) invented.

Godric Gryffindor 'adopting' the son of a Norseman who died in his service is also (to the best of my knowledge) my own invention. It is certainly non-canonical, as of May, 2014.


End file.
